Before
by Silvernote
Summary: We wanted to make her look at us, not at the memory of the man who abandoned her.


**A/N: **This is my first Fullmetal Alchemist fic. I hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.

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**Before**

After that man left, Mother always had a distant look in her eyes. Wherever she looked, she could only see him. If she had nothing to do, she would stare out the window for hours, as if at any moment he might be walking up the garden path. Sometimes, she would close her eyes and take deep breaths, inhaling the last lingering fragrance of the awful perfume he wore.

If one of us fell and scraped a knee, and started to wail, it would take her a minute to react. Her dreamy expression would turn to momentary confusion, before she was brought back to reality. Then she would dart over to us, kiss the hurt, and hug us like in the old days. But when she gazed into our teary faces, it felt like she wasn't looking at us at all. She was only searching for the traces of a face that had vanished.

We wanted her to see _us_.

"Mother! Mother! Look at this!" we would shout, holding up a bouquet of flowers, or a childish drawing.

"Edward, Alphonse, that's lovely," she would say, her expression hardly changing. "Why don't you go and play with Winry this afternoon?"

Was there nothing we could do to get her attention?

One rainy afternoon, both from boredom and frustration, we found ourselves in that man's study. We pulled books and papers from the shelves and flung them onto the floor. We wanted to destroy this place, this reminder of his absence. Then, when we had trampled on every volume, we grew curious about what was inside. What had he been doing when he locked himself inside this room for hours.

That was when we discovered alchemy.

Hours may have passed before Mother found us there, reading. We were too absorbed in the books to hear her footsteps outside the door.

"What are you doing making a mess in here?" she demanded, her hands on her hips. But for once there is a trace of a smile on her lips. "You boys really love to read, don't you?" Then, "Ed! Don't doodle on the floor! What will your father say when he comes home?"

"I'm not doodling. Look!"

Tiny hands put down the chalk and slapped down on the transfiguration circle. There was a flash of light, and a there sat a tiny, crudely made statue of a bird.

"Th-that's alchemy, isn't it? Did your father teach you that?"

"No! How could he teach us anything? We learned from the books!"

She glanced at the thick scientific volumes spread across the floor, filled with complex diagrams. Then, she shook her head weakly.

"If the alchemists of the world heard about this, they would probably faint…"

"Did we do something bad?" we asked, not meeting her eyes.

"No, no," she says, waving her hands. " I'm very impressed! I'm going to brag about this to everyone."

We looked at each other with wide, incredulous smiles.

"You boys must take after your father," she said, patting our heads.

Alchemy was one thing that got Mother's attention. Alchemy was something she would praise us for, and really mean it.

Alchemy was something that _he_ did, but we were sure that if we studied hard enough, we would be as good as him. Then, Mother would have no reason to miss him.

But soon, we came to love alchemy for its own sake as well. We were good at it. Some might have called us prodigies, or geniuses.

That time was our fondest memory. We studied, and showed Mother what we had learned, and laughed together. And if she still stared out the window with that wistful look, we reassured each other that it would soon vanish. We would be the greatest alchemists in the world, and she would be proud of us..

Then came a day when we came home from school, and found Mother sprawled on the kitchen floor. We didn't understand why she was sleeping there.

"_Mother!_"

"Your father used to make me flowers…" she whispered in a voice that trembled. "He…"

We had failed.

She had left us, and gone away to follow _him_.

That she was so willing to leave us broke our hearts, but our determination remained.

We were alchemists. We could do anything, couldn't we? We would bring her back to life, something that man would never do. Then she would see that it was us who loved her the most.

We would bring her back to us!

_Ed, Al, you boys are amazing.__Your father could never do anything like this! _ She would hold us close, and there would be an end to lonely nights in a house that lacked her warmth.

It was forbidden to transmute a human being, to walk in God's domain. What did forbidden mean to us? It was forbidden to talk during class, to climb the tree in the back yard, to fight with each other, to put glue in Winry's hair. Forbidden was a rule to break.

And we wanted to see her smile at us again.

At last, we finished our preparations and were ready to begin our alchemy. The theory was perfect. We had no doubt it would succeed.

_Mother! Mother! Look at this!_

Our dreams ended with screams and gushing blood, and the gurgling of a corpse that wasn't even human.

Later, when we understood the crime we had committed, we knew that it was better she that was gone. At least, she would not have to see the lives that we would lead from then on—the danger, the sorrow, and the all too fleeting hopes. She would never know what we had done, or see the price we had paid for our sins.

We no longer desire to show her anything. We live and smile only for each other.

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A/N: Did you like it? Hate it? Please review, it means a lot to me!

Revised 10/13/07


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